Frederick A. Hetzel

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Frederick Armstrong Hetzel (September 6, 1930 — September 13, 2003) was an American publisher of a major university press.

Hetzel served as the director of the University of Pittsburgh Press from 1963 to 1994, significantly growing the publishing house. In his efforts to acquire the best available scholarship, he focused Pitt scholarly titles in selected academic areas: history, political science, international studies, Latin American studies, Russian and East European studies, composition and literacy studies, natural history, and history and philosophy of science. Hetzel personally directed Press books about Pittsburgh and the region including titles in history, natural history, photography, biography, guidebooks, and creative nonfiction.

Special literary and academic series developed by Hetzel include the renowned Pitt Poetry Series; the Pitt Latin American Series; the Pittsburgh Series in Descriptive Bibliography; the Pitt Series in Russian and East European Studies; the Pittsburgh Series in Composition, Literacy, and Culture; and the Pittsburgh-Konstanz Series in the Philosophy. Annual publications include volumes in Milton Studies and Cuban Studies and the winners of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize, the AWP Award Series in Poetry, and the Drue Heinz Literature Prize.

Working with other cultural institutions in Pittsburgh, Hetzel copublished selected titles with the Carnegie Museum of Art, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, the Helen Clay Frick Foundation, the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania, and the Frick Art & Historical Center.

One of Hetzel's greatest publishing success stories began in 1976 when the University of Pittsburgh Press reissued Thomas Bell's Out of This Furnace to wide acclaim.

Hetzel was born and raised in Connellsville, Pennsylvania; he held degrees from Washington and Jefferson College and the University of Virginia and was an associate editor at the Institute for Early American History and Culture in Williamsburg, Virginia before coming to the University of Pittsburgh in 1961.

He was awarded a Bronze Star for his Army service in the Korean War. He had also served on the boards of the Mendelssohn Choir, the Pittsburgh Dance Council, and Winchester Thurston School.

Hetzel died at age 73 on September 13, 2003 at his Squirrel Hill home in Pittsburgh and is buried at Homewood Cemetery.